Sweet! Although I did sort of promise to share the egg with my cohorts at Great British Chefs and I totally didn’t….

Instead, I brought it home and nibbled on the big egg and its little brethren filled with praline or salted caramel. The caramel ones were my favourite, but I quite liked the praline. The salted caramel eggs were much like the salted caramel Selectors I would get from the shop in Covent Garden.

To be honest, I’m quite a big fan of Hotel Chocolat‘s wares. I briefly worked very close to their location that had just opened up on Monmouth Street in Covent Garden, and when the Christmas chocolate went on sale, I would go on my lunch break and just load up on fantastic chocolate that had been discounted. But then, when all the cut-price chocolate was bought up and gone, I was still in the shop, picking up boozy chocolate, salted caramel noms and hot chocolate (which I actually bought again recently because, my gosh, this isn’t spring!). I’ve ordered their chocolates as gifts as well for friends, who have been impressed with the quality of the chocolates, as well as the inventive flavours and shapes. Chocolate robots, anyone?

It was funny, as I thought about the chocolate eggs I had as a kid growing up in the United States, made up of waxy ersatz chocolate. Needless to say, the Hotel Chocolat Milk Beastie is heads and shoulders above the chocolate eggs of my childhood.

At the end of the chilly weekend, after I did the unconventional move of gnawing at the hollow egg rather than breaking it against something, which is what a more sensible person would have done, I was left with this:

And now, that is gone as well, so there’s none for me to share with you all. Sorry.

Oh, but wait. Actually, there is an Easter egg you can ‘haz,’ courtesy of Hotel Chocolat. Seriously.

Here’s the rules, folks.

Just let me know how you would decorate a chocolate Easter egg in the comments below, and you’re entered in, provided you are a resident of the UK who is old enough to not need parental permission to take candy from strangers (ie 18 & up, since my blog also deals with the drinky-drinks). I’m afraid I don’t know what sort of egg the Easter Bunny will bring you, but get your comments in before 16:00 GMT Tuesday, 26 March.

Yep, a flash contest. Be sharp, folks.

I’ll select the winner at random and then announce it on this here blog. If the winner fails to provide me with a valid e-mail address or is unable to claim the prize (lives outside the UK, is 12 years old, etc), then I can keeps all teh chocolates a new winner will be selected from the comments.

Keep the comments clean. Obvz. But if you want to decorate a chocolate Easter egg in some crazy zombie pattern, that’s totally cool.

Good luck! If you don’t win, you can still score some free chocolate. Right now, if you order £35 worth of chocolate fantasticness on Hotel Chocolat, you get this spring collection for free.

Melt some white chocolate and use different coloured food coloring to create your edible paints. Use a small paintbrush to recreate the sistine chapel – I’m not gonna do it though, I’d have to commission it out? Anyone good with a brush and white chocolate paint?

Excellent entries so far! Brilliant idea on the teeth camouflage for the Easter egg! Yes, this spring really needs a bit of help, and one way to do that would be to festoon an egg with images of what spring *should* be like.

Creating a Sistine Chapel in egg form is an interesting thought. May require an egg-itecht (oy!).

I’d decorate it with a whole roast chicken and invent the Easter version of turducken – chickeggen? chocken? Then put the chicken inside a massive scotch egg to make a three-course combo – starter main and choccy egg pud. Scochockeggenegg?

By the way, a scientist recently told me that HC choc has the highest level of possibly health-promoting flavonoids of all the commercial ranges he tested. Yay! On a sadder note, he said red wine is healthy at low alcohol levels :(
The wines with highest levels of procyanidin (which you want) are Madiran wines from SW France.
So now you know.

If I had to decorate an Easter Egg (I think they look perfect as they are), I would do decoration by disguise. Having lived for 2 years with a boyfriend who thinks they can get away with nibbling away bits of my easter eggs (as if I wouldn’t notice) and blame it on the cat, I would employ dirty tactics. My Easter Egg would look like a bunch of vegetables. Maybe even a pineapple. Anything apart from an Easter Egg.

Right, the winner has been confirmed! It’s our very first entrant, Stephen! Lucky him, he’s getting an egg all to his very self for the long holiday weekend. He can practice redecorating it in teeth marks, or melt it into a big mug of hot chocolate, if the weather keeps going the way it is.

Congratulations, Stephen! And many thanks to everyone else who participated! I hope you all get a form of chocolatey goodness coming to you soon!